"How do you like me?" she demanded. But when he told her very much, she shook her head in denial. "I ought to be ashamed," she added, "but I am not. Did you realize that, when we were out here before, I made you a proposal? You ignored it, of course.... I am not ashamed of what I did then, either. Afterwards, standing here, I wanted to throw myself to the street; but, you see, I hadn't the courage. It's better now, that time has gone--I'll get fat and frightful."
"This Carmache," Charles Abbott asked, "don't you like, no, love him?" She answered:
"He is, perhaps, fifty--I am fifteen--and quite deaf on one side, I can never remember which; and he smells like bagasse. I've only seen him once, for a minute, alone, and then he wanted me to sit on his knees. I said if he made me I'd kill him some night when he was asleep. But he only laughed and tried to catch me. You should have heard him breathing; he couldn't. He called me his Carmencita. But, I suppose, I shall come to forget that, as well. I wanted you to know all about it; so, when you hear of my marriage, you will understand what to look for."
"That is all very wrong!" Charles exclaimed.
That was wrong, too, he repeated, afterward. Her warmth and tender fragrance clung to him like the touch of flower petals. She turned away, standing at the front of the balcony, her arms, bare under elbow ruffles, resting on the railing. The flambeau trees in the Parque Isabel were like conflagrations. Her head drooped on her slender neck until it almost rested, despairingly, on the support before her. "I hate your northern way of living," her voice was suppressed, disturbingly mature; "I hate their bringing you into the house, only to break my heart. Charles," she laid an appealing hand on his sleeve, "could you do this--help me to run away? We have cousins in New York who would receive me. If you could just get me on a steamer!"
"No," he said decidedly, "I could not; I wouldn't even if it were possible. What would Andrés, my friend, think? It would ruin me here."
"If you had," she admitted, after a little, "as soon as we reached the street, I would have locked myself about your neck like my crystal beads. Once when I was supposed to be going with a servant to the sea baths, I had the quitrin stop at the San Felipe, and I went up the stair, to the roof, to your room, but you were out. You see, I am a very evil girl."